2023 Arcade Summer, Skin-Contact White Wine, Solano County

When it's Arcade Summer, every sip is a high score.

School just got out and the only plans on your calendar are playing pinball and locking lips with your arcade crush. You wish this free, retro feeling could last forever...and now it can.

A fun, crushable "orange" wine, Arcade Summer is all about groovy flavors. It owes its beautiful amber complexion to the "skin-contact" process, which extracts color, aroma, and texture. Traditionally with white grapes, the juice and skins are quickly separated after pressing. However, with "orange" wines, the two are left to ferment together like a red wine to soak up all that goodness. In this case, we let the different varieties intermingle with their skins for up to 7 days.

The main character for this particular game is Albariño from the McCormack Ranch Vineyard in Solano County. Albariño is an Iberian grape known for its botanical aromas, citrus undertones, and wonderful acidity. Let us tell you, this stuff thrives in the warm-summer Mediterranean climate and alluvial soils of McCormack Ranch. Combined with some Grenache Blanc, Trousseau Gris, Roussanne, and Viognier, this becomes a juicy, mouthwatering wine fit for any summer pool...or arcade.

Sporting a hue of orange you could only find in the '70s, this "orange" wine lives up to the billing. On the nose, soak up a sexy mix of floral and tropical aromas. Once you get this wine in your mouth, you'll know exactly what we meant by the term crushable. Explosive, juicy waves of tangerine, peach, nectarine, and citrus delight your tongue and a brisk acidity keeps things zesty and refreshing. The skin contact also brings a sexy tannic grip and depth, but we promise this thing is smoooooooth and satisfying. It really fingers our flippers.

For a wine this groovy, we had to go retro. And when it comes to capturing nostalgia, there's only one person we trust to nail the look and feel: Sita Kaylin. Our longtime collaborator, co-conspirator, and favorite person has a knack for capturing vintage aesthetics and moods. Speaking of which, please check out Sita's new book, Anything But a Wasted Heart. For this project, we told her we wanted to feel like we were back in 1979, hanging at the local arcade, jamming on a pinball machine without a care in the world. And after seeing this photo, we're back in time, soaking up every minute of the Arcade Summer.

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